As indictment served in Ramle, body of four-year-old girl laid to rest in a Paris cemetery.
By DAN IZENBERG, ABE SELIGlittle rose 248.88(photo credit: Israel Police)
As the body of four year-old Rose Pizem was being laid to rest in a Paris cemetery on Monday, the state prosecution filed murder charges against her mother, Marie Pizem, and Ronnie Ron, the girl's grandfather, in connection with her death.
"It was an upsetting scene," said David Rosh, head of the Jewish Agency's delegation in France, who attended the funeral. "To go to the funeral of a little girl that went through that kind of a story, it was just awful."
Rose's father Benjamin and his wife were in attendance, along with the girl's grandmother and other grandfather, who according to Rosh, were weeping throughout the ceremony.
"There was a priest there, and crosses," Rosh said. "Everyone was just in a state of shock - the photo they had put of Rose fell down three times during the funeral. They had to stop each time and put it back up."
But as her daughter was being buried in France, Marie Pizem was in a Ramle courtroom facing murder charges alongside her former partner, Ron, as the state prosecution finally shored up its case and presented an indictment to the court.
While charges were expected last week, the prosecution on Monday denied that there had been a delay, stressing that they were simply finishing up the investigation into a complicated and troubling case.
"There was no delay," said Tal Vider, a spokesman for the prosecution. "Remember that the body was only found 10 days ago. Since then investigators have been working around the clock to conclude the investigation and file charges."
The main development on Monday was that Pizem was charged with the same crime as Ron, murder.
Although police believe that Marie Pizem knew of Rose's death and may even have been directly involved in it, they failed to find direct proof to pin her to the crime. Marie Pizem has insisted all along that the first she heard of her daughter's fate was when police arrested her and informed her.
According to reports, police have a taped conversation of Pizem and Ron discussing Rose's death after it happened. There is also a report according to which on the day police came looking for Pizem and Ron, Pizem called a friend and asked her to bring her a five-year-old girl. Otherwise, she allegedly said, Ron would go to jail. There is also testimony from a babysitter who told police that on the day Rose disappeared, Pizem and Ron came home together looking agitated and changed their clothes.
But all of this constitutes circumstantial evidence at best.
As a result, the police and the prosecution hesitated over whether to charge Pizem with murder along with Ron. But, according to sources, the severity of the crime was such that they felt they had to take the chance.
A spokeswoman for the prosecution emphasized that Pizem had been considered by police to be a suspect in the murder.
"It was never said that she wasn't a suspect in the murder," the spokeswoman said. "Now it's just official. Marie Pizem and Roni Ron are standing on the same line - they're both charged with the murder of Rose."
Even in the case of Ron, there is only circumstantial evidence to back up a murder charge. Ron himself confessed to police that he had struck Rose because she was bothering him while he was driving. The blow had killed her, but that hadn't been his intention, he maintained.
Law enforcement authorities hoped that an autopsy on Rose's body would reveal the cause of death, but it didn't.
The indictment is vague regarding both how Rose died and the role played by Marie Pizem in the events. It does not include the version of events given by Ron in his confession.
"The accused, or one of them, stuffed Rose into the suitcase after her death or while she was still alive," the indictment states. "Afterwards, Ronnie took the suitcase with Rose or her body inside and threw it into the Yarkon River in Tel Aviv. By the acts described above, the accused [plural in Hebrew] premeditatedly caused Rose's death."
According to University of Haifa criminal law professor Emanuel Gross, one key incriminating factor regarding both Pizem and Ron is that they had a motive for killing the child. Both of them allegedly wanted her out of their lives. According to one report, on the day Ron went to take Rose home from her great-grandmother's house (Ron's mother), Pizem had cried and threatened to commit suicide if the girl returned.
Nevertheless, the prosecution's hesitations had to do with Marie Pizem rather than Ron. The authorities have made it clear ever since Rose's body was found on September 11 that they would charge Ron with murder.
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